


Fur, Friendship and Avoiding The Federal Government

by 7CuteCreationImagination7



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Based On A Better Fit With The Same Plot, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Panic Attacks, Violence, Why Did I Write This?, no one asked for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-25 04:03:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14968700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7CuteCreationImagination7/pseuds/7CuteCreationImagination7
Summary: The Stranger Things, Steve Harrington WerewolfAU that no one asked for.This is based off the other, better werewolf ST story. I think it's called Thriller Night





	Fur, Friendship and Avoiding The Federal Government

**Author's Note:**

> Another Steve Harrignton AU Oneshot because I have no self control, and I am bored.
> 
> There is another fic of practically the same plot, I know. I don't know why I wrote this, but I hope you like it.
> 
> Love You, lovely readers. I appreciate any comments, and I'm sorry that I didn't edit this too well.
> 
> Love, and God Bless 7CCI7

It was just one of those things that you don’t ask people.

How much do you earn? How much did your house cost? Do you also turn into a dog sometimes?  The questions that, despite the fact that everyone wanted to ask them, no one ever could. Not him anyway.

The first time it had happened, everything could have gone horribly wrong.

He had been trying to fall asleep, but that itch under his skin that had been building up for months was just intensifying as the moon had risen.

Then, his seven year old human body, decided that it didn’t want to be human anymore. He remembered stuffing the duvet into his mouth as he has shrieked and whimpered.

It had hurt, like a splinter being pulled out from his foot, but only his entire body was covered in splinters, and there were all being pulled out at the same time.

Steve remembered leaping down from his bedroom window, and sprinting through the forest, his mind only preoccupied with the smells, and sounds and everything that a human mind couldn’t sense.

Despite how fun it had been, his parents didn’t quite believe him after he explained that he has sleepwalked a mile away from their house, and fallen back asleep in a ditch.

So that was how it had always been.

Go to school.

Feel the awful itchiness, the adrenaline, the need to burst out of his skin, which would intensify for about three days every month.

Go home, to the empty house, or ignore the sounds of his parents screaming at each other, or shouting at him, or shouting at each-other about him.

And at night, every now and then, turn into a dog-wolf thing.

* * *

 

Steve had never been quite sure if he was a were-wolf or a were-dog.

When he had been little, his barks had sounded like those of Tommy’s golden-retriever puppy, and his claws had been rounded, like those of a normal dog.

He had never seen anyone else do it, the whole wolf thing.

His parents obviously didn’t have it, if the frequent hints that he should obey them and go to the psychiatrist and talk about "whatever's wrong with" him.

But then, in the fall of 1983, things had changed.

On one of his good days, when a long sprint across the track at school had been enough to get rid of the burning under his skin, he smelt _it_.

That awful smell, reptilian and human at the same time, a strange mixture of the smell from the roadkill, dead and gone, and the stench of filthy unwashed human _evil,_ the type of smell he sometimes got when he walked past his Dad when he was angry, but so, so , so much worse.

But it wasn’t human.

Its emotions didn’t have the same scent at human emotions, just translating to _kill-eat-fight_.

But it was evil.

He hadn’t noticed how much he had hated the smell, until he had looked down at his hands, his trimmed nails replaced by long, sharp claws.

The next day, he flirted with Nancy at the locker, inhaling the _soap-books-mint_ smell of happiness emanating from her, and wondering why he denied himself this for so long.

But he knew why.

Tommy and Carol,  they weren’t just the friends which his parents wanted him to have, due to their rich parents.

Tommy and Carol were training for him, Tommy’s pungent smell of greed, malice and aftershave mixed with the cologne-snark and apathy of Carol had trained him not to flinch away from smells.

He knew they were awful people, and he knew that he was awful too.

But he just ignored it, because they didn’t ask questions as to why he could never sleep at their houses, or why he came to school with bruises when he had gone home, not to a party.

He also steadfastly tried to ignore the obnoxiously loud warning bells going on in his head as he heard that Will Byers was missing, the stench of _kill-eat-take_ still hovering in the air.

* * *

 

Then there was the party.

The party made everything difficult to ignore.

Unlike everyone, he wasn’t affected by alcohol.

Unfair, true, but it also meant that as his friends were slurring, he could sense that the smell of the monster was getting stronger.

But then Nancy was fluttering her eyelids at him, and she was in his room and —

For a few blissful hours,  for the first time since he had been seven his wolf side had decided to shut up.

Only to wake up to smell the scent of Jonathan Byers, and blood of Barbara Windors, and the horrible certainty that, because he hadn’t been paying attention, the Monster had been in his backyard.

Things got worse.

The smell didn’t just cover his forest now, but it smelt strongly everywhere, it was so strong that it became unbearable, and covering himself with his dad’s aftershave barely even got rid of that smell.

Jonathan and Nancy were going off together, and Nancy was probably cheating on him and—

So here he was, in front of Jonathan, teeth bared and ready to fight. But then, he saw his hazel eyes turn blue, in the reflection of the car mirror, and he knew, he knew that this sucked, but he knew what he had to do.

He let Jonathan win the fight.

He pretended to not care about the blood on his face, his rapidly healing bruises would look too suspicious.

His dad was going to kill him.

* * *

 

So he tried, actually tried, to make things right.

He stopped being friends with Carol and Tommy, their smell of betrayal, anger and greed becoming too annoying, too blurring to his senses.

He had to kill the monster, once and for all.

But first, Nancy.

Because they could at least break up before he had to leave the country, with tales of his lycanthropy buzzing behind him.

So here he was, at Jonathan’s house, and he blinked.

The lights were flashing.

The smell was stronger than it had been in his back-yard.

 

The monster was here.

Nancy pointed a pistol to his shoulder, and he stared at it before reminding himself that he was supposed to be scared.

Because humans died when they were shot anywhere, they didn’t have his whole -head-heart-wolfsbane-mountain ash only deal.

So he did the human thing, and after having been nearly mauled to death by a bear trap, he ran out, like the coward that he was, and tried to rub his hands until his claws retracted again.

But then, then, the lights came back on, and the monster was back.

These weak, fragile, breakable _humans_ which had never been in a proper fight in their lives, were facing something that even he, a were-canine didn’t know about.

So he charged.

* * *

 

This time, it felt different.

It wasn’t the desperate breaking free, the feeling that came from sniffing all of Hawkins, trying to see if there was someone else like him.

This wasn’t the releasing anger, like a bursting balloon, the feeling of boiling water being poured over his skin , and eventually cooling, waking up to chwered up tree trunks and large holes in the ground after passing out..

This, he thought as he bared his long, white fangs at the monster that was currently looming over Byers, was probably what children felt when they opened up presents on Christmas morning.

He howled, he had never done it before, too scared that something would happen, that he would get caught, but it felt so right to Steve, that he almost couldn’t stop it.

The monster turned, and Steve lunged, sinking his teeth into its presumed neck.

It tasted gross.

Like rotting fried liver, motor oil and just a little bit of slug.

But it was struggling against him, so the thing that he killed Mini-Byers and Barb was finally _dying_.

It threw him off, its needle like teeth tearing the skin on his chest, and the crunch of his ribs as it threw him down onto the floor had him whimpering.

He saw Nancy and Jonathan’s horrified faces, and he got back up, snarling at it.

If Steve was going to die, he was going to go fighting, not locked up in a lab somewhere when his class-mates called the feds.

Steve tore into its neck again, but this time, he dragged it into the ground, it screeched as he pulled it towards the trap, claws desperately scratching his skin and thumping at his chest.

Then, something magical happened.

The bear trap closed up, and then, before Steve could even register the heady smell of gasoline, the creature was on fire, the soft chink of a lighter hitting the floor as the flames lit up.

Someone grabbed the skin on his neck, and gently pulled him away from the flames.

Steve hadn’t realised that he had been walking towards the faux bonfire, until he noticed that his nose was uncomfortably dry and the smell of singed fur was surrounding him.

He slumped onto the carpet, looking mournfully at his, now shredded clothes.

He had like that shirt.

Nancy tentatively sat beside him, and Jonathan sat next to her. Steve should have been angry, really, he knows that. He can smell the bond that they have, not unlike the bonds that his Aunt Isabel and Uncle Michael have. Love.

But he is in pain, and tired, and he may be carted away by some men in lab coats at any minute, so he really can’t bring himself to care.

Nancy is a big girl, and he can’t change who she loves.

Steve can feel the right-ness fading away so he shakingly stands up, and nudges Jonathan’s hand with his nose, before whining as he holds his ripped shirt in his mouth. This is humiliating and annoying, but he needs clothes, and possibly stitched, and maybe to go to hospital… anyway, he needs clothes.

In the bathroom, he watches at his fur turns to pale human skin, and his bright blue eye go back to their normal hazel colour, slipping the sweater over his still-bleeding chest.

Yeah, his ribs are broken.

He rinses his mouth with water, and begins to plan which country he will move to, to escape his inevitable life as a lab experiment.

Maybe Guatemala, that country seems nice.

  It didn't matter. He just needed to escape before Nancy and Jonathan came to their senses and got him locked up.

* * *

 

Steve limps out of the bathroom, the glorious rush of wolf-adrenaline fading as he ignores the pair on the settee, and heads towards the door.

Nancy, shrieks, because her original voice wasn’t high enough,

“ Steve Harrington, you are not driving like that!”

“Why not, Nancy Wheeler?”

It’s supposed to come out snarky and charming. If even he can hear the tiredness and fear in his voice, then he really isn’t doing to well.

“ You— You - You’ve just turned into a wolf!”

Huh. So it was were-wolf, not were-dog.

Cool.

Steve chuckles, the door now open in front of him as he smiles at them, Jonathan’s curious eyes and Nancy’s concerned ones staring at his face.

“ Nancy, I’ve been doing that for years. Its not exactly new to me. Now, are you calling the feds on me or not?”

Okay, so charming had gone out the window and had been replaced by nervous and factual.

Blood was staining Jonathan’s shirt, because apparently, broken bones and Monster goo messed with his healing powers.

Wonderful. Everything hurt.

Jonathan’s about to speak, his heart hitching in anticipation, when he smells _it_ again. Its coming from the school.

“ It’s going to the school. I need to get there, now.”

“ You are coming with us. Nancy, please get some ibuprofen, no Steve, were not calling the Federal Government on you because you turn into a wolf sometimes. Now, sit down, and close the door.”

So Jonathan could be scary.

That was interesting. Steve sat down, and stared at the burnt up hallway.

He had just revealed himself in front of his ex-girlfriend and Jonathan Byers, both who rightfully hated him.

Steve Harrington was going to be erased from all records and held in a lab as they poke and prod at his non-human body.

He couldn’t breathe.

Now, this wasn’t surprising. He had been thrown onto the floor with his ribs taking most of the impact, and he probably had some smoke inhalation.

But he was panting, like his wolfy self would, and his hands were shaking as his heart crept up into his throat.

The smell was getting stronger, like the monster was hiding, licking its wounds and was getting ready to come back.

Someone was talking to him, but to be honest, he couldn’t be bothered to care or pay attention, because didn’t the idiot that was speaking to him realise that he couldn’t flipping breathe! Maybe the government had already come for him, and they were going to make him pass out with some oxygen removing drug. That would explain why he felt like he was going to die, the edges of his vision crowding with dark spots. Someone—presumably another government worker, shoved something into his panting mouth, and forced him to drink.

Water.

He swallowed, trying not to choke, and blinked confused, why would his murders want to keep him hydrated?

Then he blinked, to see two faces staring to him. Jonathan. Nancy. Oh.

He scrubbed at his face, and hoarsely, but more confidently than he had expected, smiled as he said,

“ Okay. Lets go to the school, and do a repeat performance of that, only, lets go and get some guns this time to really kill it, yeah.”

They both shook their heads at him, in unison, Jonathan softly speaking to him, like he was a scared baby deer.

“ I’m driving, and were taking the long way, so we explain about the Demogorgon, and you tell us about… the wolf thing.”

* * *

 

The atmosphere in the car… well, it was the antithesis of relaxed.

Jonathan was driving, Nancy was awkwardly trying to not look as he bandages his chest, as she talked.

About Barb, and Hawkins energy lab, and the Upside Down, about how this town was more messed up than anyone could even imagine.

Then he gets two expectant looks, and Jonathan glares at him through the car mirror.

“ Uh, wolf thing. Done that since I was seven. I need to turn regularly, otherwise I get … weird.Doesn’t run in the family. It’s weird, but its kinda cool.”

The looks he was receiving resume, just as he relaxes. They want to know more.

“ Abilities… uh… Smell. I’ve been smelling the Monster for the last month, but I didn’t know what it was. Hearing, I think. People’s heartbeats are quite loud to me.”

Oh.

Now they just look freaked out, so he shuts up.

His entire body protests as he curls up into himself, like he does when he wanted to ignore the sound of plates smashing when he was little.

 

* * *

 

He passes out at some point.

He should feel guilty for bleeding all over Jonathan’s car and house, but… the guy’s just interrogated him about stuff he had never told anyone, so, whatever.

It is dark outside, and he is in the car, but the smell of monster is so strong, it is like he can’t help it as he sprints into the school.

Men with guns are everywhere, and for a second, his heart beats so fast it feels like it will beat out of his chest.

But the guns are all trained on a fragile, small, little girl, that is crying as she looks at a man with white hair.

The man goes to pick her up, and scolds her gently as she struggles against him, when Steve shouts, both at this evidenly awful man, and as the smell becomes way too intense.

The wall bursts open, and the monster emerges, in its pure reptilian, slimy glory.

It eats Evil Blond Man, and a few of the gunmen, but the girl can’t take him alone.

Steve closes his eyes as he slips his shoes off, his socks falling on the linoleum floor.

Jonathan’s sweater comes off too, and he can hear people shouting at him, but he knows what he has to do.

He peels the bandages off, his chest a beautiful myriad of bruises as he looks at the montser.

The shouts are full of emotion, confusion, fear, worry, concern.

Steve smiles at the girl, and tells her, as gently as he can, to stand back.

She does it.

 

He charges at the monster, willing the adrenaline to help him, praying for this to work.

This is less graceful than at the Byer’s house.

It is a mess of claws, teeth, hisses and snarls. He knows that he will definitely be killed soon, if not by this, then by the people who were hunting the kid.

They end up in the old geography classroom, and Steve knows that the blood on the floor is more his than the monsters, and though someone had been swinging a bat at it a few times, he’s too close, and there are a few swings too close to Steve's head before the person gives up.

The girl throws everyone to the walls, his injured side thumping against brick, his whimper mixing with human groans.

The girl bared her teeth, blood streaming down her nose, as she screams at the monster.

It bursts into nothing.

She killed it.

This tiny, sweet looking child, more skin and bone than any other kid that he has ever seen, has killed the monster that fire, bear traps and a teenage-werewolf couldn't do.

Steve wants her to be President. This tiny kid is _awesome_

Everyone celebrates. Jonathan and Nancy hug.

The Wheeler boy kisses the girl.

The remaining kids rush over, and hug each other.

* * *

 

Steve doesn’t change back.

The boy knows he should, he knows that he is dripping blood, and that police will wonder where the puddles of non-human blood came from. But he can't care anymore.

He doesn't want to go back home, doesn't want his fake relationshop with his parents or Nancy to dwindle into nothing before his eyes, the boy doesn't want to see the things tethering him to Normal slip away from his powerless claws.

The wolf, a grey-white wolf with bright blue eyes, brown and red blood sticking to his fur, walks out of the back door.

No one is there, the moon is high in the obsidian night sky.

The wolf, which could really be mistaken for an over-grown siberian husky at this point, sniffs at the night air, and it whimpers quietly as the wind stings his battered body.

In a small trot, the wolf disappears into the Hawkins forest, to the sounds of relieved parents, rejoicing children and bewildered police officers.

 

     The wolf goes.

 


End file.
